Reflecting on her childhood, Tucson, Ariz., Mayor Regina Romero points to her father as the figure who lit an environmentalist fire within her.
Any chance he'd get, Romero's father would take his wife and six kids to an 800-acre ranch in the Sierra Madre mountain range of Sonora, where they learned how to ride horses, direct cattle, and to respect the wildlife, such as bobcats and brown bears.
"We invaded their space," he would tell them.
At the ranch, there was an outhouse instead of running water, rivers instead of showers. It was very rudimentary, Romero told EHN.
But riding through these biodiverse mountains on horseback made it all worth it.
"It was just so liberating," Romero said.
Five years ago, Romero's father passed away. Still his legacy lives on, as Romero, the first-ever Latina mayor of America's 33rd largest city, uses her platform to build an environmentally resilient community.
Regina Romero, mayor of Tucson, Arizona. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
In Feb., Romero solidified a pledge to plant 1 million trees in the semi-arid desert city by 2030, when she joined the 1t.org US Chapter Stakeholder Council, a group of public, private and nonprofit leaders committed to the restoration of 1 trillion trees globally.
The U.S. chapter, including REI, National Forest Foundation, Amazon, the City of Dallas and the City of Tucson, have committed to more than 1 billion trees thus far.
Romero's goal: adapting to a rapidly changing climate in the country's third fastest warming city.
"Climate change waits for no one," Romero said. "Without a liveable community, we have no Tucson."
Romero, urban forestry manager Nicole Gillet, and local groups such as Tucson Clean and Beautiful, are prioritizing tree-planting in low-income communities, which are disproportionately burdened by Tucson's urban heat island effect.
"We have to attack the problem where the problem exists," Romero said.
According to a Climate Central report, Tucson has warmed by 4.48 degrees Fahrenheit since the first Earth Day in 1970, which is more than Phoenix, 110 miles to the north.
Recent research shows that some Tucson neighborhoods are up to 8 degrees F warmer than the city's average. Neighborhoods with the highest Latino populations are 4 to 5 degrees F warmer on average.
"It's not that the heat is seeking out low-income populations," lead author, John Dialesandro, a Ph.D. candidate studying urban climatology at University of California, Davis, told EHN. "It's a lack of greenspace."
In the desert Southwest, the extra heat that low-income neighborhoods endure often coincides with lack of air conditioning. Many households must choose between air conditioning, healthcare, and food, one University of Arizona paper said.
These communities with less indoor cooling often have fewer trees to provide shade as well.
Some Tucson neighborhoods with high poverty rates are only 1 to 2 percent shaded by tree canopy, according to an American Forests tree equity map.
This is an issue of public health, Adriana Zuniga, an assistant research scientist in the University of Arizona's College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, told EHN.
"It affects quality of life," Zuniga said. "Vegetation is linked to better air, lower temperatures, less stress, studies show less use of antidepressant medication."
Trees help biodiversity
2020 was Tucson's driest year on record, at only 4.17 total inches of rainfall. (Photo credit: Sean Benesh/Unsplash)
According to Zuniga, urban vegetation can also alleviate issues facing desert biodiversity, especially migratory species.
"Their habitats have been fragmented so much from urbanization that every spot of vegetation counts," Zuniga said.
Migratory pollinators are declining in the Sonoran Desert. More than 10,000 pollinator species are at risk in the Southwest, according to the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.
The monarch butterfly, known for its remarkable blood-orange wings, is a keystone species that relies on nectar resources in southern Arizona during its spring migration.
Over the last two decades, monarch populations have fallen by 80 percent. Some of the causes include climate change, drought, deforestation and declines in milkweed plants, which female monarchs rely on for laying eggs.
"They desperately, desperately need our help in developing those patches of habitat for them to use while they migrate back and forth from Mexico, all the way to Canada," Zuniga said.
Restoring the watershed during a drought
Trees need water. And the Southwest is in a drought.
2020 was Tucson's driest year on record, at only 4.17 total inches of rainfall.
Thus, planting 1 million trees in the next decade has faced criticism.
Thats frickin right, Tucson already has water restrictions on landscaping and Romero wants to plant a million trees. W.T.F.!!!https://t.co/GWeM4zV5wH — Rancho-Del-Los-Valkayrie (@RnchoDelValkyri) February 5, 2021
But Lisa Shipek, executive director of Watershed Management Group in Tucson, believes that the initiative is realistic if native, drought-tolerant trees are planted.
"Velvet mesquite trees, desert ironwood, blue palo verde—there are a number of trees that are very appropriate to plant in the city, are found at these low elevations, and can be sustained just on rainwater," Shipek told EHN.
In fact, Shipek said, planting 1 million trees could actually restore parts of the Tucson watershed.
Before the mid-1900s, Tucson had a platter of perennially flowing rivers and creeks, such as the Santa Cruz River, Rillito River, and Sabino Creek. Then came over-pumping and massive urban development.
Now, it is rare to see flowing water.
In urban areas, where much of the surface is paved and impermeable, the million tree initiative could allow more rainfall to reach Tucson's watershed, according to Shipek.
"Putting in a rain basin with every single tree will help restore the watershed and ensure more water is infiltrated where the rain is falling," Shipek said.
A rain basin is a surface that allows rainwater to soak in and feed the trees, and indirectly, Tucson's groundwater. Groundwater contributes to streamflow.
Rainwater will be the primary fuel for the million trees initiative. When Romero entered office, she and her council approved a green stormwater infrastructure fee, which charges the average residential water-user $1 per month. Over the next three years, the fee will generate up to $7 million for sustainable stormwater harvesting in parks, streets, and parking lots, according to Romero.
Relying on rain in a drought is tricky, but according to Katie Gannon, program director at Tucson Clean and Beautiful, rain will reach these trees by way of nature. When more trees are present, the surrounding air becomes cooler, causing more clouds to drift into the low-pressure system, she told EHN.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
GROTON, Mass. — Steam billows inside Black Earth Compost’s processing facility as Syed Dong, regional operations manager, opens the building’s delivery door and lets in the chilly March air.
Inside, billions of bacteria are breaking down a big pile of food scraps, yard waste and compostable bioplastic packaging into water, carbon dioxide and compost, a nutrient-rich soil amendment.
“This is where we ignite the composting process,” Dong told Environmental Health News over the roar of machinery blowing air through the pile. Soon, his team will move the heap outdoors for further processing in windrows, long organic waste piles covered with leaves. After three months, the compost will be sold or distributed to farmers, landscapers, garden centers and residential customers.
Black Earth Compost is one of a growing number of industrial composters accepting compostable bioplastic packaging along with yard and food waste. Compostable packaging is derived from both plants, such as corn, sugarcane or bamboo, and petroleum products, and is designed to decompose under controlled conditions at a composting facility. It is a type of biodegradable bioplastic that’s a popular substitute for single-use plastics in the food industry, from cups, bowls and cutlery to wrappers, bottles, bags and take-out boxes. In theory, compostable food packaging helps cut plastics pollution and methane gas emissions from landfills by diverting food scraps to a composter and breaking down into a product that nourishes soil. Consumers are more likely to compost food waste if it’s tangled up with biodegradable plastic packaging or restaurant serviceware, experts say.
Black Earth Compost facility in Groton Massachusetts.
Credit: Syed Dong
“If packaging touches food, it really should be compostable if you can't have it [be] reusable,” Frank Franciosi, executive director of U.S. Compost Council, told EHN, citing plastic’s abysmal 5 to 6% recycling rate and the oft-quoted figure that if global food waste were a country, it would produce one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.
But our composting infrastructure isn’t ready to handle bioplastic packaging. We do not have guardrails for ensuring that materials are truly compostable and safe for recycling back into soils. Consequently, traditional plastics often contaminate compost while truly compostable materials often rot in a landfill. Additionally, the potential for compostable packaging to leave behind microplastics and chemical additives that could harm soil ecosystems, or be taken up by crops, isn’t well researched.
Contamination from traditional plastics or materials misleadingly labeled as biodegradable, makes it tougher to evaluate the safety and efficacy of composting bioplastic packaging. It also makes it economically more difficult for industrial composters to thrive.
“These early generation [bioplastic] alternatives are very imperfect, but from our perspective, redesigning packaging is the right direction. I just don't think we're there yet in terms of really having cracked that nut,” Eric Roy, an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Vermont, told EHN.
Composting packaging materials
Composting is nature’s process for recycling organic matter into fertilizer. Industrial composters use temperature, moisture and aeration and hone their feedstock mix to enhance the process. Operators range from small community composters that process waste in windrows to large facilities equipped with forced air and biofilters to capture smelly emissions.
Over the last decade, food waste collection has become more common and so has the collection of compostable packaging. More sophisticated operations are more likely to take compostable bioplastics, as evidence suggests they can decompose packaging better, Linda Norris-Waldt, deputy director of the U.S. Compost Council, told EHN.
“If packaging touches food, it really should be compostable if you can't have it [be] reusable.” - Frank Franciosi, executive director of U.S. Compost Council
Black Earth Compost operates three small facilities and began accepting food packaging when it realized compostable bags were vital for food scrap collection, Andrew Brousseau, compost operations manager at Black Earth Compost, told EHN. “Early on, we felt [compostable packaging] was a great solution to single use plastic,” he said. “Our stance is that reusable should be used where possible and where that's not possible… it should be compostable.”
Food scraps bring additional nutrients to compost, which benefit the soil, while the compostable packaging helps with collection of the scraps, is a carbon source for the compost and creates structure and air spaces in the pile, Brousseau said.
Black Earth Compost takes only packaging that is certified compostable by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), OK Compost, or the Compost Manufacturing Alliance. These voluntary certifications require manufacturers to meet criteria for breaking down within 12 weeks at an industrial compost facility, as well as be PFAS-free and pass a soil ecotoxicity test. Even so, vestiges of plastic contamination poke out from the windrows at Black Earth Compost—a clear Dunkin Donuts cup, bright blue flowerpots and numerous pale green garbage bags.
Syed Dong demonstrates what a certified compostable garbage bag looks like after roughly one month of decomposing
Credit: Meg Wilcox
Plastic contamination at Black Earth Compost facility.
Credit: Meg Wilcox
Lifting a garbage bag shredded and riddled with holes, Dong said, “This one’s compostable.” But the Dunkin Donut’s cup and flowerpots? Not so much. More troubling are look-alike green garbage bags that are fully intact. These look-alike products are designed to mimic their compostable counterparts and it’s impossible for Black Earth Compost’s drivers to tell the difference, said Dong.
Fraudulent marketing of these materials as “biodegradable” or “plant-based” is rampant and confusing, Brousseau said.
“Our stance is that reusable should be used where possible and where that's not possible… it should be compostable.” - Andrew Brousseau, compost operations manager at Black Earth Compost
Removing plastic items from compost production is a never-ending job at Black Earth Compost. It starts with educating customers and pick-up drivers and ends with the use of specialized fans for sucking out remaining plastic contamination, with a lot of labor-intensive hand sorting in between.
A recent study by the Composting Consortium found that 21% of composters’ operating costs are spent on removing contaminants, the majority of which are traditional plastics. But they also found that plastics contamination was a problem regardless of whether a facility accepted compostable packaging.
“It’s the intrinsic nature of what we're doing as recyclers,” Brousseau said.
Do compostable bioplastics really break down?
Examples of some of the certified compostable materials that Black Earth Compost accepts from its customer, Cabot Theater in Beverly, Massachusetts. The theater composts all popcorn bags, cups, straws and napkins and recycles. All drinks are served in compostable cups.
Credit: Lisa Champigny
While some report that compostable items like cutlery don’t break down well, the Composting Consortium’s field study found that, for the most part, compostable packaging does fully decompose at industrial facilities. Eight of nine composters studied that accepted compostable packaging had no detectable amounts of the materials in their finished compost.
“When [compost] piles have optimum conditions with the best management practices, bioplastics by and large break down very well,” Rhodes Yepsen, an executive director at BPI and a member of the Composting Consortium, told EHN.
That’s Black Earth Compost’s experience. “After three months, there's no more compostable plastic,” Dong said. “Any plastic that you see past that point within the life of a pile, that's conventional plastic.”
However, in compost samples University of Vermont researchers studied, they found fragments of poly-lactic acid, or PLA, which is commonly used to make compostable packaging, and what appeared to be compostable bags but could have been look-alikes. Though they weren’t the majority of plastics found, they were “wellrepresented,” Kate Porterfield, a doctoral student at the University of Vermont, told EHN.
More troubling, the University of Vermont’s research found widespread microplastic contamination in compost materials, though that research didn’t distinguish whether the microplastics came from compostable or traditional plastic materials.
Roy said, “it's a tricky question” what happens to microplastics created by compostable materials.
“Theoretically, they will persist in the environment for a shorter amount of time than traditional plastics will,” and that’s a “good thing.” But there’s “some evidence that these materials are not necessarily entirely benign in the soil environment.”
Degradation of microplastics “all depends on what the polymer is, how it's put together and the environmental circumstances,” Richard Thompson, professor of marine biology and director of Plymouth University’s Marine Institute, told EHN.
Meanwhile, studies show that chemical additives or chemicals transported by microplastics, may be more concerning than the plastic polymers themselves, which complicates our understanding of risk. “All the combinations of polymer, additive, shape and size…each might have different effects in the soil environment,” Roy said.
That is perhaps why Franciosi said that, after PFAS, “microplastics are the next fire” for the compost industry.
PFAS and other chemicals
Food and yard waste delivery inside Black Earth Compost facility.
Credit: Syed Dong
PFAS used in coatings on food packaging have long been a concern for composters, but state actions to ban the chemical from food contact materials along with the Food and Drug Administration’s recent announcement that manufacturers will no longer use it on fiber-based food packaging may alleviate some concerns.
“I think [the FDA’s announcement] would have an enormous impact on really eliminating that source of PFAS into the compost,” David Andrews, senior scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, told EHN.
BPI’s certification test for PFAS adds another layer of protection for composters accepting only certified materials, although non-certified materials will continue to slip by.
“When [compost] piles have optimum conditions with the best management practices, bioplastics by and large break down very well.” - Rhodes Yepsen, an executive director at BPI
Little is known about the chemicals that are used in compostable bioplastics; however, one study found that many bioplastic materials were as toxic as their conventional counterparts. Certifying entities like BPI require compostable packaging to pass a soil ecotoxicity test that evaluates plant germination and biomass rates over several weeks. But that test may not be sufficient to evaluate the potential for harm, Roy said.
“It's a good test to include, but it's not necessarily the way to comprehensively screen a material for every potential effect on the soil,” he said. It doesn’t capture everything that might be happening within the soil environment, such as effects on microbial communities or effects that take longer to manifest.
In response, Yepsen said, “BPI is open to evaluating how studies might better capture factors like microbial communities and long-term effects.”
But the larger concern is that many manufacturers do not certify their compostable packaging materials and there are no laws requiring them to do so.
Future of bioplastics and compost
Research is needed to understand how quickly microplastics from compostable packaging may linger in soils, and whether they may release chemical additives that could harm soil life.
While Roy said it will be difficult to eliminate microplastics, they can be reduced by reducing unnecessary packaging, setting policies that test for and limit plastic contamination in compost, educating the public and innovating in packaging materials that are free of harmful chemical additives, degrade quickly and have proven not to pose a risk to soil organisms or plants.
Additionally, the U.S. composting infrastructure needs significant investment. Nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t have access to composting services and much of compostable food packaging ends up in peoples’ homes and ultimately in a landfill or incinerator. The proposed federal Compost Act would provide funds for composting infrastructure, Franciosi said. Extended producer responsibility laws that require packaging manufacturers to invest in recovery systems could also help fund these facilities.
Meanwhile, back at Black Earth Compost, Brousseau envisions scaling up to a decentralized network of small compost facilities, each serving ten Massachusetts communities, and a future where food packaging is largely compostable. “Imagine the peanut butter jar, bag of oysters, cheese block wrapping … you don’t have to clean it and maybe have it recycled. You can toss it in the bin, get it recycled locally and support your regional food system.”
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
A long-awaited Interior Department policy will raise financial assurance and royalty rates, aiming to ensure cleaner operations and better returns for the public.
In a recent legal development, the Justice Department has sided with a Wisconsin tribe's claim against a Canadian energy company over land rights, sparking controversy.
The DOJ supported the Bad River Band's claim that Enbridge has trespassed on tribal land by operating the Line 5 pipeline, suggesting a higher compensation than the court-ordered $5.15 million.
Despite DOJ's support, the request for immediate cessation of the pipeline's operation was not granted, raising concerns among tribal leaders.
The broader implications involve international treaties and ongoing diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Canada over pipeline operations.
Key quote:
“We are grateful the U.S. urged the court not to let Enbridge profit from its unlawful trespass.”
— Robert Blanchard, chairman of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians
Why this matters:
Enbridge maintains that its projects are crucial for economic development and energy security, emphasizing its commitment to safety and environmental stewardship. The company also points to regulatory approvals and its efforts to consult with tribal communities as evidence of its attempt to balance these interests.
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency nears finalization of its emissions standards for power plants, potential modifications aim to tighten controls on gas-fired facilities.
The EPA is considering extending compliance deadlines for power plants needing carbon capture technology.
Discussions suggest modifications that would broaden the scope of strict emissions standards to include more gas-fired power plants.
Stakeholders including environmentalists and industry groups have influenced the ongoing revisions, seeking feasible implementation timelines.
Key quote:
"We were obviously concerned that by removing existing gas from this rule that it opens up the opportunity to rely more on existing gas, and the emissions from gas plants could increase."
— Ann Weeks, senior counsel and legal director at the Clean Air Task Force
Why this matters:
Natural gas plants, while cleaner than coal-fired plants, still emit significant amounts of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. In addition, these plants can release pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which can cause respiratory problems and other health issues.
Tightening emissions regulations aligns with broader efforts to reduce the United States' carbon footprint and transition towards more sustainable energy sources.
Brazil's beef industry faces a potential 25% reduction in production by 2050 if it fails to adapt to stringent climate policies and forest conservation efforts.
Brazil's beef production might decrease by a quarter by 2050 due to enhanced climate and forest conservation measures.
The cattle industry faces significant financial risks unless it adopts new technologies and sustainable practices.
Deforestation linked to cattle ranching exacerbates climate change, negatively affecting cattle health and soil productivity.
Key quote:
"The future of the Brazilian cattle sector is set to look very different to how it appears and operates today."
— Niamh McCarthy, director of Orbitas
Why this matters:
Rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods are expected to impact pasture quality and water availability, crucial for cattle grazing. These environmental changes can lead to reduced feed quality and availability, stressing cattle and potentially decreasing meat and milk production.
Technological solutions like decarbonization might not address the deeper social and political issues affecting environmental sustainability.
Emphasis on reducing carbon emissions often overshadows other environmental concerns such as biodiversity loss and pollution.
The current strategy of reducing emissions through technological means may neglect the underlying economic and political factors contributing to environmental degradation.
Key quote:
"Technology can, at best, kick conflicts down the road. Peace cannot be engineered."
— Peter Sutoris, environmental anthropologist
Why this matters:
Relying solely on decarbonization to achieve sustainability overlooks several critical aspects of environmental and societal health. Decarbonization primarily focuses on reducing carbon emissions, particularly from energy production and industrial processes, which is undoubtedly essential. However, sustainability is a broader concept that includes economic, social, and environmental balance.
Oregon’s Regenyx plant announced its closing in late February, with those involved calling it a success, despite never reaching planned capacity and millions of dollars lost.
